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oblue

Abandoned by Booklikes

Government drone by day and book lover and geek girl by night!

Currently reading

This Time Next Year
Sophie Cousens
An Extraordinary Union
Alyssa Cole
A Princess in Theory: Reluctant Royals
Alyssa Cole
Burn for Me
Ilona Andrews
Nocturnes
John Connolly
After I'm Gone
Laura Lippman
The Black Angel
John Connolly
The Ballad of Black Tom
Victor LaValle
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Halloween Bingo Pre-Party: Favorite Ghostly Tales

The Shining - Stephen King The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson, Laura Miller A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings - Charles Dickens, Michael Slater Heart-Shaped Box - Joe Hill Pet Sematary - Stephen King

Hmm. Favorite ghostly tales. Now this is a tough one. I honestly had to go back to my Goodreads account to look this up since I didn't want to give a wrong answer here and also wanted to make sure that I was only counting favorites.

 

So my top 5 ghostly tales books are the following with excerpts from my original reviews:

 

The Shining by Stephen King. 

"This book is peak King for me honestly. Everything including the ending (which he has trouble sticking at times) works. The ending makes sense based on everything that came before it, and I applaud King for not just throwing out a happy ending when I think that would have made readers (or constant readers) just as happy."

 

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.

 

"This book in a word was perfect. Everything worked and Shirley Jackson keeps up your unending sense of dread while you are reading this book. When the band of four start investigating the house and you read how it was built you start to imagine a slightly off house in your head as they go exploring. I seriously wish someone had made a map of the house since it was so confusing trying to understand where rooms were located. Having the little foursome start to turn on each other and then become afraid together and alone was actually more frightening than whatever was going on in Hill House."

 

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. 

"I love reading this Christmas classic every year. I bought this one because it came with illustrations. Not too much to say besides this classic tale of a man visited by three ghosts ends up changing his life and those around him."

 

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe HIll. 

"The plot seems very simplistic at first. Jude buys a ghost. However, finding out about the ghost and how it ties into Jude's past I thought was quite brilliant. There were some side plots with Jude's dying father, and Marybeth's past that I really at first didn't see how that could work with the larger "got ghost, must be rid of it" plot, but everything worked very well. 

The writing I thought was phenomenal. Just a few sentences describing something were enough to put my teeth on edge and to make my skin crawl. Which leads me into discussing the flow of the book. 

The flow of the entire story I thought was good, and Mr. Hill seemed to know enough when to slow the pace down (in order to allow the atmosphere to sink in) and when to speed it up. All of the chapters were like amuse bouche's to me. Tiny chapters that gave big flavor. I think that's why I just kept reading without stopping once I got going since before you knew it you were at the end of one chapter and I would just think, okay, just one more chapter."

 

Pet Sematary by Stephen King. 

 

"Wow. So this is marked as a favorite, I have only read this one twice. It's a lot to sit through. At times you hope there is going to be a break or some sort of happy ending. Instead we get a book about consequences and things perhaps set in motion by something dark that wanted to ruin a happy family. I have to say that I do love most of King's earlier works. They tend to be more raw and real to me. Pet Sematary made me cry when I read it as a teen and it made me cry again this weekend. "